Electronic vouchers are widely employed in the fields of electronic ID recognition and electronic payment voucher. By making traditional vouchers electronic, the cost of vouchers is reduced, the safety of vouchers is enhanced, and electronic commerce is provided with electronic voucher means. The major businesses forms of the voucher means include electronic tickets (such as performance admission tickets, sport event tickets, film tickets, sight spot admission tickets, train and ship tickets, air tickets etc.), electronic coupons, electronic delivery coupons, electronic membership cards, electronic ID cards and the like.
A typical electronic voucher business is electronic coupon. In the business of electronic coupon, a user acquires an electronic coupon by ways such as Internet, call center. The user can download and print an electronic coupon via an Internet website, and can also submit a mobile telephone number to a website, so as to facilitate the website to issue an electronic coupon via, such as, a multimedia message of the mobile telephone. A user may dial the telephone number of a call center and the call center may push an electronic coupon to the user as requested. The user may show the electronic coupon received by his mobile telephone to a merchant. After recognizing and reading processing by the merchant' electronic voucher terminal, the user may use the electronic coupon to enjoy discount and favorable price.
A typical way to issue an electronic voucher is by multimedia message, i.e., issuing an image format, optically readable electronic voucher through a multimedia message. When a user uses the electronic voucher, he needs to show the multimedia message to a merchant, so as to facilitate the user or the merchant to recognize and verify the electronic voucher on an optical recognition terminal.
Another typical way to issue an electronic voucher is by short message, i.e., issuing the voucher number of an electronic voucher to a user's mobile terminal through a short message. When the user uses the electronic voucher, he needs to show the short message to a merchant, so as to facilitate the user or the merchant to input the voucher number of the electronic voucher into a voucher verification/recycling terminal. A short message with WAP PUSH format may also be issued through WAP PUSH, upon opening the short message and clicking the URL of the short message, the user then may download actively an image including an electronic voucher.
A further typical way to issue an electronic voucher is by enhanced short message, i.e., issuing an electronic image format, optically readable voucher through an enhanced short message. When a user uses the electronic voucher, he needs to show the multimedia message to a merchant, so as to facilitate the user or the merchant to recognize and verify the electronic voucher on an optical recognition terminal.
All current mainstream embodiments of electronic voucher have diverse problems respectively, which restrict the development of electronic voucher businesses:
1. The way of downloading an electronic voucher and printing it into a paper voucher via Internet has high requirements of users' operating environment (need a printer), and the printed paper voucher is not easy to be preserved and may be easily duplicated, so that security concern exists.
2. The way of issuing an electronic voucher through a multimedia message is facing more extensive problems, including:
the cost of issuing a multimedia message is higher, which has formed a serious obstacle to a voucher businesses with a larger business capacity;
the cognitive level of users to multimedia message is low (Many users are unable to use multimedia message service);
not all users' terminals support multimedia message service;
the accessible rate of an issued multimedia message is low; and
a multimedia message needs to be adapted in terms of the size and resolution of a user's mobile terminal, whereas the information of the terminal belongs to the user's privacy and is not easy to obtain (one may not achieve the information of the user's mobile terminal unless supported by its operator) and so on.
3. The way of issuing the number of an electronic voucher through a short message encounters input trouble. For safety concerns, the number of an electronic voucher is generally long, which frequently causes input error while inputting the number of an electronic voucher.
4. In the way of issuing an electronic voucher by an enhanced short message, as the size of an image which is allowed to be transmitted by the enhanced short message is too small, a common code scanning gun or reading apparatus is unable to recognize the electronic voucher. It must be recognized by a specially designed device. On the other hand, an enhanced short message also must be adapted for the brand and the type of a mobile terminal, whereas the information of the terminal belongs to the user's privacy and is not easy to obtain (one may not achieve the information of the user's mobile terminal unless supported by its operator).
If an electronic voucher business can be realized though a short message and an electronic voucher can be automatically recognized by a recognition terminal, not only the problems that Internet and multimedia message electronic voucher business faces can be well resolved, but also the problem of input error while sending the number of the electronic voucher can be resolved. Short message business/services is one of the mobile businesses which are widely accepted by users, almost all of mobile terminals support short message services. The cost of short message service is low, the accessible rate of issuing is high, and the adaptation in terms of the brand and type of a mobile terminal is not needed. As short message can only issue text characters, generally optical reading of the text character requires OCR (optical character recognition) technique. Because the high computational load of OCR technique, both the recognition ratio and recognition speed is not acceptable, especially on the mobile terminal or embedded equipment with lower CPU frequency and small memory.
The basic principle of optical character recognition is comparing a “character” separated from the image with the standard samples in template library, and judging the character which the “character” belong to according to the matching degree. The bigger the number of standard samples in template library is, the heavier the CPU computational load required by the comparison algorithm will be. This causes the speed of recognition be reduced. At the same time, the bigger the number of standard samples in template library is, the higher the ratio of wrong matching will be. The solution of the present invention is to categorize a character set based on features for reducing the number of standard samples in a template library, and thus reducing the CPU computational load and improving the speed and success ratio of recognition. Take the character set GB2312 (there are 7445 characters in this character set) as an example, if the 7445 characters are classified into 16 categories in the term of features, the number of standard samples in a template library is reduced from 7445 to 16, and the computational load of sample comparison is approximately reduced to 16/7445=0.2% of that when using the whole character set, so as to dramatically reduce the CPU computation amount, and improve the speed and success ratio of recognition. Meanwhile, when the number of samples is reduced, a simpler, lower computational load comparison algorithm could be adopted. The success ratio of recognition is also improved, while reducing the computational load. The following features belong to simple comparison features: axial symmetry and rotational symmetry of the text characters, number or proportion of dark spots, dispersion of dark spots, number of lines, type of lines, projection histogram features in x axis and y axis, frequency domain features in x axis or y axis, and type or number or position of cross points of lines, and so on. In addition, eliminating some characters (such as “I” and “1”; “O” and “0”; and “” and “”) subjected to misidentifying simplifies the comparison algorithm significantly, and improves the speed and success ratio of recognition.
Another feature of the present invention is to improve the safety of an electronic voucher through “many to one” mapping method between characters and bit groups. When many characters could be mapped to same code information, it will significantly improve the difficulty of deciphering, and conjecturing the context of the electronic voucher and the way of coding, so as to enhance the security of electronic voucher business.